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**107**

**Chapter 7**

**Abstract**

livelihood

**1. Introduction**

*Ifeoluwapo Amao*

Urban Horticulture in

Horticultural crops refer to fruits, vegetables, spices, and ornamental and medicinal plants which are rich sources of vitamins, minerals, and phytochemicals. Rapid urbanization and migration of rural populace to the more industrialized city center has led to poverty, malnutrition, low and insecure incomes, ill-health and other livelihood problems. These problems are mostly seen among the people residing in urban areas who have migrated from rural areas. Urban horticulture ensures food and nutrition security, healthy environment and sustainable livelihoods, employment generation, among others. As such, this chapter carried out an empirical review of the state of urban horticulture in cities across sub-Sahara Africa. This is to enumerate ways whereby the benefits of urban horticulture can be specified in the region. It concluded that governments in the different countries need the political will to actualize identified benefits of urban horticulture. The chapter then recommends sensitization of the pertinent stakeholders in countries across sub-Saharan Africa on the benefits of urban horticulture. Such stakeholders include politicians, policy makers and urban households. This is in order to integrate the concept into urban land use planning while carefully considering sustainability of the environment.

**Keywords:** fruits and vegetables, sustainable city, food security, malnutrition,

per capita has been observed in sub-Saharan Africa where the average real per capita income in year 2010 was 688 USD as compared to 1717 USD in other developing countries of the world [1]. Agriculture is a major contributor to GDP in Africa (up to 32%). Nevertheless, the sector is characterized by low productivity. It is important to increase agricultural productivity in Africa to ensure poverty reduction [1]. In addition to poverty, inhabitants of most cities in sub-Saharan Africa are experiencing micronutrient deficiencies. For instance, over 200 million and 1.6 billion suffer from Vitamin A and iron deficiencies respectively [2, 3]. In the same vein, it is expected that the populations in urban cities across sub-Sahara Africa will increase rapidly due to rural–urban migration and natural population increase [4]. A projection of 20.2% increase is expected by 2050 [5] which will place more burdens on the currently available food, fruits and vegetables in cities across the region. Other challenges posed by the rapid growth in these urban areas include food insecurity and unemployment [6]. Urban agriculture/horticulture is a veritable solution to these identified problems in the urban areas of sub-Sahara Africa.

Low levels of poverty due to failure of growth in Gross Domestic Product (GDP)

Sub-Saharan Africa
